View 638 August 30 - September 5, 2010 (original) (raw)
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Friday, September 3, 2010
Jobs, education, republics and democracies
The economy continues to sputter, with fewer jobs being created last month, and a continuing threat of a double dip recession which under the circumstances is almost indistinguishable from a depression. But none dare call it depression.
Of course there are about 10 million jobs being held by illegal aliens. They aren't the most desirable jobs, and some of them pay less than extended unemployment subsidies, but they are jobs that would presumably be filled if they were vacant. How many of the 10 million jobs are held by people who consume other public services isn't known, but it's surely a non zero number.
In another conference we've been discussing manufacturing jobs in the US. One major loss was in steel workers: there is plenty of steel being produced, but by far fewer steel workers. This is efficiency, or increased productivity, which is to be lauded. But as one of the discussants said, "I would worry less about not having enough steel than I would about not having enough steel-workers," which is a succinct way of saying it.
It's not the output. It's the people. Our output could be the sky's the limit; but if large segments of the population are idle or do not feel as if they are contributing, it will change the nature of our population, the way we think and how we engage the world.
I would worry less about not having enough steel than I would about not having enough steel-workers, if you get my drift. I rather like people who can do things, being as my family includes railroad car-greaser, steelworkers, canal boater, stone masons, bricklayer, blacksmith, cooks, master printers, and the like. We could not rebuild the Steel now if we wanted to. When the New Jersey Transit proposed re-opening the Lackawana Cut-off for rail traffic, they said it would take 10 years. A century and a half ago, it took the Delaware Lackawana and Western Road three years to build it from scratch, including surveying the route, blasting tunnels, and filling defiles. Whatever the post-Modern Age will be called, it will not be called "industrious."
A Republic can survive only when the citizens believe they are valuable members of the society. A nation of self-governing serfs isn't going to happen. Madison said "Pure democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths."
Jeffersonian democracy isn't going to happen. At one time it was a primary concern to produce enough to feed everyone; no nation was ever more than a few meals away from a revolution and when the mob seeks food it generally does so by burning the bakery and likely burning the baker as well. Now, though, our problem isn't too little farm produce, it's too few farmers. Family farmers aren't needed except for the boutique trade. The US went from a mining and farming nation to a manufacturing nation and then to a service economy nation, and at each step another part of the population became useless.
One use for surplus people is in armies which can go levy tribute on other nations: but we don't do that.
So we have a nation that can afford to give ten million jobs to illegal aliens, while providing the illegals and their families with all the benefits of a first world economy. But unemployment among the citizens is increasing, and subsidies for the unemployed are extended again and again.
The remedy, presumably, is education. Madison told us "A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it is but a prologue to Farce or Tragedy or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own Governors must arm themselves with the power knowledge gives." Serfs aren't educated and don't value education. Not that it matters because the purpose of the schools is to pay teachers and administrators, and to endure the dominance of gatekeepers and credential sellers. Imparting actual knowledge to actual students, equipping the 50% of the population that is below average with an ability to earn a living and imparting to all the students the civic virtues that keep a Republic going is no part of the massive public education system. Indeed, civic virtues aren't even stated as goals any longer.
See http://online.wsj.com/article/
SB100014240527487036185045754
59994284873112.html?mod=djem
EditorialPage_h#articleTabs%3Darticle in today's Wall Street Journal.
It has always been the case that civilization depends on a small part of the population; those who read this journal can congratulate themselves on being part of that small minority. The purpose of government ought to be to let those who can make things happen do them. Sometimes that requires rule by an aristocracy smart enough to allow the able to do their jobs: Rome at various times during the Republic and during the Empire, Britain during its glory days. Sometimes it can be done by a Republic. Venice during many parts of its thousand years, the United States sometimes. Republics can be glorious. They generally tend toward democracies, and as Disraeli said,
If you establish a democracy, you must in due time reap the fruits of a democracy. You will in due season have great impatience of public burdens, combined in due season with great increase of public expenditure. You will in due season have wars entered into from passion and not from reason; and you will in due season submit to peace ignominiously sought and ignominiously obtained, which will diminish your authority and perhaps endanger your independence. You will in due season find your property is less valuable, and your freedom less complete.
Milton Friedman was fond of saying that if something can't go on forever, it will stop.
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The California Consumer Affairs Department is said to have issued a press release apologizing for the seizure by a CSA agent of a $1400 chair to be burned in a safety test. The incident took place in Truckee. The chair was seized without receipt, warrant, or any authorization other than a 1975 law, and the agent, an M. Oleson (possibly Olesen, Olson, or Olsen) has "been reassigned" according to the radio show which first broke the story. (She is said to have been removed from dealing with the public. Of course she wasn't fired. No one ever is.) The press release is not to be found on line, but that may be due to the notorious efficiency of the Department of Consumer Affairs. The manufacturer of the chair is not in California but is reported to be sending a reimbursement to the retail store in Truckee from which the chair was seized personally by M. Olson. Olson carried it out to a van and drove away with it after highlighting the section of the code that makes it a crime to interfere with the DCS agents and displaying the highlighted text to the flabbergasted store owner.
So far no one seems officially to have addressed the search and seizure aspects of the incident. I have yet to see anything about this on the net other than here or to have heard of it other than on the KFI talk show, but I doubt that it was all made up. Apparently a California Consumer Affairs executive has spoken with the talk show and says a press release is being issued apologizing for the incident.
Rick Fong of the Department of Consumer Affairs (Deputy Chief of the California Department of Consumer Affairs Bureau of Investigation) called the store owner to apologize. He says they didn't know they were still doing this. Or maybe they did, but no one complained before. Anyway they won't do it again.
Rick Fong serves as the Deputy Chief of the California Department of Consumer Affairs' Bureau of Security and Investigative Services, helping to manage the agency's consumer protection, licensing and enforcement regulation of the private security industry. Mr. Fong has served in several positions with the Department of Consumer Affairs since 1993, most recently as Manager of the Centralized Mediation Center, which handled consumer complaints for several agencies, including the Bureau of Security and Investigative Services, the Bureau of Automotive Repair, the Bureau of Electronic and Appliance Repair, the Bureau of Private Postsecondary and Vocational Education, the Hearing Aid Dispensers Bureau and the Bureau of Home Furnishings and Thermal Insulation. He was the Bureau of Automotive Repair Industry Ombudsman since 2003, and served previously in that Bureau's Enforcement Division as an Enforcement Program Specialist and Representative. Prior to his transition to public service, Mr. Fong had a 17-year career in the rail industry and automotive repair industry as a program administrator, service director, trainer and technician. He is a graduate of California State University, Sacramento, and holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration.
Of course there's no evidence that the chair isn't actually in the living room of some agent of the Department of Consumer Affairs. Apparently all this has been going on for years, and has gone on until this summer; but Mr. Fong has decided that this shouldn't continue, and they are going to stop it now that the practice has come out in public. I suspect this is just a curtailment of a neat perk that agents of the Department of Consumer Affairs have had for furnishing their offices and possibly their houses. It is not clear how M. Olesen, who will eventually be retired on pension because she is never going to be fired, decided on this small retail furniture store in Truckee (a very small town in the Donner Pass area) to raid in her quest for furniture. Apparently it didn't matter. From the story we hear, M. Olson is clearly skilled at intimidation and no one ever objected before when she confiscated hundreds of dollars worth of goods and furniture.
There is supposed to be coming a press release on this, but I am not going to hold my breath until it comes out.
I do contend that perhaps the state would be better served without so many agents going about seizing private property. Perhaps this is one place that budgets could be cut?
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Things went bad for Governor of Arizona Jan Brewer who suddenly found herself bereft of a script and had to improvise. That has never happened to anyone else, of course. The talk shows are making much of all this.
And horrors! She said things had got so bad that they were finding beheaded bodies in the desert. Apparently that is an exaggeration. Dead bodies, murdered people, yes, found in Arizona; beheaded bodies are just across the border in plenty, but apparently haven't made their way into the surrendered territories in Arizona yet. Or haven't been found. All the coroners have found is skulls in Arizona. Across the border is something else.
The Attorney General of Arizona is horrified. There really weren't any beheadings, but that, according to him -- who is running against Brewer -- is the reason that tourism is down in Arizona. Ye flipping gods. But the establishment press is having a lot of fun yelling for answers about beheadings. Distressed reporters.
And Obama is bringing lawsuits against the Sheriff for enforcing the law.
he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.
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I have been involved in a discussion of the Iron Law in another conference.
Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy: in every bureaucracy there are two types of people, those dedicated to the goals of the agency (example: good class room teachers) and those dedicated to the bureaucracy itself. The second kind inevitably gain control of the bureaucracy. Always.
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